More than half of 26 randomly selected toys for pets sold in Taipei and New Taipei City were not properly labeled, while seven presented a choking hazard, the Consumers’ Foundation said yesterday, as it urged the government to set standards for pet toys.
To get an idea of the safety of pet toys, which are not regulated by specific laws in Taiwan, the foundation in December randomly selected 26 toys, including rubber balls, cat teaser wands and dental chew toys, from several pet shops to inspect.
The toys were examined to see if they conformed to the Commodity Labeling Act (商品標示法), as well as national standards for the safety of children’s toys and children’s products, Consumers’ Foundation chairman Terry Huang (黃怡騰) told a news conference in Taipei.
Photo: CNA
The foundation found that 16 of the toys did not properly identify the name of the toy and its materials, or provide information on when, where and by which company it was manufactured.
This included five toys that did not have any labeling at all, the foundation said in its report.
Under the Commodity Labeling Act, local governments should inform manufacturers when they fail to properly label their products and set a deadline for manufacturers to rectify the issue.
Failure to do so can result in repeated fines of NT$20,000 to NT$200,000.
There were also seven toys that presented a choking hazard, while a toy shaped like a bone was found to have excessive amounts of plasticizers, the report said.
Nearly a quarter of the toy’s composition (22.9 percent) was diisononyl phthalate, well above the national standard for children’s toys, which allows no more than a 0.1 percent concentration of eight types of plasticizers combined, the report said.
A similar report produced by the foundation in 2016 found that only 12 percent (three out of 25) of pet toy products had proper labeling, compared with 38.5 percent (10 out of 26) in the new report, Huang said.
This shows that pet toy manufacturers still are not familiar with labeling regulations, which needs to be improved immediately, Huang said.
He also called on the government to establish standards for pet toys, as statistics show that the number of pets in Taiwan could reach a record high 3 million this year.
The foundation advised owners to choose toys that are the right size for their pets to prevent choking and to stop using toys when they begin to fall apart.
Johanne Liou (劉喬安), a Taiwanese woman who shot to unwanted fame during the Sunflower movement protests in 2014, was arrested in Boston last month amid US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) said yesterday. The arrest of Liou was first made public on the official Web site of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday. ICE said Liou was apprehended for overstaying her visa. The Boston Field Office’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) had arrested Liou, a “fugitive, criminal alien wanted for embezzlement, fraud and drug crimes in Taiwan,” ICE said. Liou was taken into custody
The US-Japan joint statement released on Friday not mentioning the “one China” policy might be a sign that US President Donald Trump intends to decouple US-China relations from Taiwan, a Taiwanese academic said. Following Trump’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday, the US and Japan issued a joint statement where they reaffirmed the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and support for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organizations. Trump has not personally brought up the “one China” policy in more than a year, National Taiwan University Department of Political Science Associate Professor Chen Shih-min (陳世民)
‘NEVER!’ Taiwan FactCheck Center said it had only received donations from the Open Society Foundations, which supports nonprofits that promote democratic values Taiwan FactCheck Center (TFC) has never received any donation from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a cofounder of the organization wrote on his Facebook page on Sunday. The Taipei-based organization was established in 2018 by Taiwan Media Watch Foundation and the Association of Quality Journalism to monitor and verify news and information accuracy. It was officially registered as a foundation in 2021. National Chung Cheng University communications professor Lo Shih-hung (羅世宏), a cofounder and chairman of TFC, was responding to online rumors that the TFC receives funding from the US government’s humanitarian assistance agency via the Open Society Foundations (OSF),
ANNUAL LIGHT SHOW: The lanterns are exhibited near Taoyuan’s high-speed rail station and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the airport MRT line More than 400 lanterns are to be on display at the annual Taiwan Lantern Festival, which officially starts in Taoyuan today. The city is hosting the festival for the second time — the first time was in 2016. The Tourism Administration held a rehearsal of the festival last night. Chunghwa Telecom donated the main lantern of the festival to the Taoyuan City Government. The lanterns are exhibited in two main areas: near the high-speed rail (HSR) station in Taoyuan, which is at the A18 station of the Taoyuan Airport MRT, and around the Taoyuan Sports Park Station of the MRT